Table Tennis In The Park

Exmouth, last Sunday....

Today.....

On the way back from the hour consultation with our lovely homeopath - he prescribes Sulphur for my husband's itchy skin patches - we walk through the lovely park, Northernhay Gardens - the oldest public open space in England in Britain dating from 1612. I've been walking through it into the far end of  town for ten years, ever since we came to Exeter, and only recently read about its historic significance - bounded by a Roman and a Saxon wall.

This evening it's crowded with groups of young people lounging on the grass in the sunshine and the flower beds are tall with rows of crimson dahlias and flopping echinacea daisies.

We stop to have a game of table tennis at one of the free tables set up by the council, sharing our ping pong balls with the four young lads in black T-shirts on the next table. They are polite and sweet and move their iPod playing very loud reggae music further away.  Between points one of them does some amazing upside down acrobatics on the table, and my husband cheers and claps him.

He wins our set of three games in spite of the sun shining right in his eyes.....it's  6.30 pm but still  warm and balmy as summer. 

We leave the park and my husband wants to show me all the Ethnic supermarkets he has been visiting recently on his walks to and from the town. He came back with a box of Turkish Delight, some chocolate Rice Crispie squares and a packet of Custard Creams the other day. In the Asian Stores he's fascinated by anything with Chinese writing on -   anything dried or frozen or pickled or tinned  - I don't recognise some foods which look like they could be animal parts and have no wish to try them....we could be in Singapore, inside the shop.

I say I'll make a  Chinese meal for supper and we buy delicate green tea ramen noodles, coconut milk,  sticks of fresh lemon grass and a bunch of coriander.

Much later we sit down to stir fried chilli prawns with the noodles tossed in sesame oil and a wokful of gingery, garlicky, coconut veggies - pak choi, baby corn, courgettes, beans and red peppers spiced up with  a secret ingredient - Vietnamese Mint which has a chilli hot flavour - a plant given to me by a friend who has a friend who sneaked it out of the country.....she says I  must keep it well watered.

Now I can hear my husband having a bath....and I think about the friend I had breakfast with this morning - her husband has semantic dementia too  - only he lives in a care home and has to have supervised baths as he doesn't know how to use the taps...